Ilka Gedő is one of the most significant, but at the same time one of the least known figures of twentieth-century Hungarian art. Although from her early youth onwards she had close contact with contemporary artists, historians of art, writers and philosophers, her universally significant artistic oeuvre is unparalleled. This may be why her work is still largely unexplored. Ilka Gedő's oeuvre is not simply a variation of contemporary artistic gestures, if it were, the possible analogies would undoubtedly help in its interpretation. Her oeuvre is off the mainstream, it deviates from it and it has the traits of an outsider and, as such, it is an irritation-the 1946-1949 self-portrait series, for example, is definitely an irritation within Hungarian art. At the same time, however, this art is not a pronounced innovation that would provoke the desire for analysis because of its newsworthiness, it is the result of an absolutely conscious synthesis. The oil paintings from the period between 1970 and 1985 capture the tension between intellectual and emotional aspects and are both unprecedented and without peer in Hungarian painting.